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You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

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Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#171

Post by sidewndr46 »

throwaway9870 wrote: post #170

You just don't "use" heat to make electricity. You need some sort of heat engine running a cycle. All those require temperature differential. This is basic thermodynamics and isn't going to change with new technology. This temp differential is what is required to extract useful energy. So I don't understand why they talk about material at a certain temp having energy compared to oil. If we lived on a planet that is u…

Your point is well made. If all it took was heat, then climate change would probably be the best thing ever. More heat captured from the sun would give us more energy.

Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#172

Post by hedora »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #171
throwaway9870 wrote: post #170

You just don't "use" heat to make electricity. You need some sort of heat engine running a cycle. All those require temperature differential. This is basic thermodynamics and isn't going to change with new technology. This temp differential is what is required to extract useful energy. So I don't understand why they talk about material at a certain temp having energy compared to oil. If we lived on a planet that is u…

Your point is well made. If all it took was heat, then climate change would probably be the best thing ever. More heat captured from the sun would give us more energy.

Open challenge: Getting an elected US politician to seriously propose a space heat sink as a solution to climate change.

There were some people seriously proposing big convection tubes that'd bootstrap columns of hot air, then passively pull surface air into the upper atmosphere. I can't find a link, but those wouldn't get to low earth orbit, so not a "space" technology.

Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#173

Post by rvalue »

and suffer the fate of krypton?

sorry, I couldn't read the article without solving the question of energy cycle in my mind. renewable sources like solar, wind are kind of taking energy from outside, so in case of geo-thermal, if we keep using that, there is nothing thats balancing the equation.

Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#174

Post by marcosdumay »

throwaway9870 wrote: post #170

You just don't "use" heat to make electricity. You need some sort of heat engine running a cycle. All those require temperature differential. This is basic thermodynamics and isn't going to change with new technology. This temp differential is what is required to extract useful energy. So I don't understand why they talk about material at a certain temp having energy compared to oil. If we lived on a planet that is u…

Ok, with the sheer amount of red flags on the article, you chose that hill to die on?

If you can get it anywhere, you go get it near the sea, and dump your heat there.

Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#175

Post by sidewndr46 »

hedora wrote: post #172
sidewndr46 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your point is well made. If all it took was heat, then climate change would probably be the best thing ever. More heat captured from the sun would give us more energy.

Open challenge: Getting an elected US politician to seriously propose a space heat sink as a solution to climate change. There were some people seriously proposing big convection tubes that'd bootstrap columns of hot air, then passively pull surface air into the upper atmosphere. I can't find a link, but those wouldn't get to low earth orbit, so not a "space" technology.

I've heard of launching some large mirrors into orbit, or a bunch of small mirrors that can link together in orbit. Then you use them to reflect some sunlight off into space. I have no idea how practical this is. The bigger concern would be if something goes wrong, you need to make the mirrors deorbit quickly.

Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#176

Post by joshuacc »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #108
derefr wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anything that works would be used by the oil and gas industry, and if they're not trying it, one suspects it might not be working. To flip that around: this would imply that the most under-investigated-in-industry approaches to deep hole boring would be the ones that destroy the economic value of any oil-and-gas in the ground, no? Ones that make the ground radioactive, perhaps. Or that would set any potential oil f…

Don't worry, we were doing nuclear fracking back in the days. Everything that could work has been tried for oil and gas exploration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gasbuggy Regarding drilling operations that destroy value: you're forgetting that drilling is 1D while oil fields are 3D (technically quasi-2D with horizontal dimensions 100x to 1000x larger than vertical dimensions). If your drilling messes up ever…

Why do you think that drilling is one dimensional? Drilling at an angle, and even at gradually changing angles is common.

Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#177

Post by hedora »

derefr wrote: post #83
Animats wrote: post #45

Microwave drilling. It's a known thing at small scale.[1] If it can be done at larger scale, it ought to have other applications. Doing it downhole at the end of a long pipe string is going to be much harder than doing it in a factory. So why isn't this an industrial machining process already, like plasma cutting? GA Drilling was pushing plasma drilling back in 2018.[2] They're still pushing it, but not making holes.…

> Anything that works would be used by the oil and gas industry, and if they're not trying it, one suspects it might not be working. To flip that around: this would imply that the most under-investigated-in-industry approaches to deep hole boring would be the ones that destroy the economic value of any oil-and-gas in the ground, no? Ones that make the ground radioactive, perhaps. Or that would set any potential oil f…

I've long wanted to put some money into an eco terror fund.

It would buy controlling interests in all the companies that make some critical, specialized and heavily patented piece of modern internal combustion engines or coal turbines. Then, it'd wreck the factories, and patent troll everyone else into not producing.

Money is speech, and that would be protected political speech, right? :-)

Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#178

Post by geoduck14 »

throwaway9870 wrote: post #170

You just don't "use" heat to make electricity. You need some sort of heat engine running a cycle. All those require temperature differential. This is basic thermodynamics and isn't going to change with new technology. This temp differential is what is required to extract useful energy. So I don't understand why they talk about material at a certain temp having energy compared to oil. If we lived on a planet that is u…

>You need some sort of heat engine running a cycle. All those require temperature differential.

I lived a long time before I figured this out. It is important

Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#179

Post by samatman »

pharke wrote: post #162

If we converted all energy production to geothermal, would it be possible to significantly increase the cooling of the Earth's core? The flow from the Earth's core to the surface is estimated at 47±2 terawatts[0] The total energy supply for 2017 was 162,494 TWh[1] World energy demand is expected to grow 27% by 2040 Currently, heat escaping from the Earth accounts for only 0.03% of Earth's total energy budget at the s…

The only mechanism we would have for significantly increasing the cooling of the Earth's core would involve heading the atmosphere well past the habitable band.

Ultimately if heat isn't radiating from the atmosphere, it isn't leaving the planet.

Re: You can have geothermal power everywhere if you drill deep enough

#180

Post by hedora »

hedora wrote: post #177
derefr wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anything that works would be used by the oil and gas industry, and if they're not trying it, one suspects it might not be working. To flip that around: this would imply that the most under-investigated-in-industry approaches to deep hole boring would be the ones that destroy the economic value of any oil-and-gas in the ground, no? Ones that make the ground radioactive, perhaps. Or that would set any potential oil f…

I've long wanted to put some money into an eco terror fund. It would buy controlling interests in all the companies that make some critical, specialized and heavily patented piece of modern internal combustion engines or coal turbines. Then, it'd wreck the factories, and patent troll everyone else into not producing. Money is speech, and that would be protected political speech, right? :-)

Once it had demonstrated enough success to instill fear in the hearts of wall street bankers, I think it could start turning a profit. It would announce targets ahead of time, tanking the stock. On the way down, the companies would reinvest the money they make selling themselves for parts back into the fund.
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